


If I Leave Here Tomorrow

by KuriKoer



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, C6D - Fandom, Californication (TV), Canadian 6 Degrees
Genre: AU, Drugs, F/M, Sex, Slayer, demon, it's not character death if he isn't dead, rock n' roll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 19:40:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KuriKoer/pseuds/KuriKoer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was a slayer who didn't want to be, he was a half-demon who had no choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Leave Here Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Not much Buffy in it at all, just slayers and demons.
> 
>  
> 
> * several quotes lifted directly from transcript; relevant eps, s2ep2, s2ep8

_Angel, first lines: Los Angeles. You see it at night and it shines. A beacon. People are drawn to it. People, and other things. They come for all sorts of reasons. My reason? No surprise there. It started with a girl._

 

 

They drove out to LA in a beat up car, a Mustang that wouldn't go in reverse and could only hurl them forward, past the _Welcome to Sunnydale_ sign and onto the long, empty road. Janie was in the passenger seat, her eyes wide, almost frightened. She clutched his hand between the seats, and he kept one eye on the road and one on her, one hand on the wheel and one in hers. It was going to be their happily-ever-after.

"Let's get out of this hellhole," she said in a low voice, and then laughed, high and surprised and a little hysterical. "Fuck destiny."

Funny thing, they were in LA less than a week when this chick called Destiny saw him playing his guitar one evening and... But anyway, that was another story.

His mother was a demon, that's where he got his listening skills, his ability to hear music where music wasn't happening yet, to hear feelings where a guitar strummed. A sort of an empathic demon himself, he was getting more and more suffocated in Sunnydale; and when he fell in love with a slayer...

"I can't believe I'm out of there," Janie breathed, letting her eyes fall shut, and her sigh of relief filled the car with so much joy he had to pull over. She opened her eyes. "Why are we stopping?"

Without words he took her hand and placed it on his dick. She grinned.

"Yeah, I'm happy too," she said softly, and started massaging him through his jeans. Lew let his head fall back against the headrest, answering her with a blissful grin of his own.

 

~

 

The cocaine took care of his own emotions, numbing the pain of her being gone, like a missing limb inside his heart; and it took care of the waves of misery and self-loathing that rolled all around him in this town, this always-lit city where everyone was talented and no one was ever enough. A double fence, both in and out, and he dove into the snowy mountains with intense, desperate glee, like he dove into every warm, welcoming embrace, wet and tight and loving. Every cliche was true; he had sex, he had drugs, and he had rock n' roll, all day and all of the night. Parties that lasted forever. Happily ever motherfucking after.

The music was love, in its own intimate way. Every time he listened, every time they played, he opened his heart and the music carried him on, made it all worthwhile. And he got used to it; he got used to living without her. He only ever thought about her when he was drunk, when he looked deep into his soul and it stared back at him with wise old demon eyes.

 

~

 

"I was gonna be a guitar hero."

He was nowhere near as good as he wanted to be, but he knew how to scout for gold in others, their talented fingers producing all the things he couldn't. 

"She was gonna design my stage clothes."

Janie just wanted to create something beautiful for him, something that was in her mind the antithesis to her life on the hellmouth. _Something without blood and the stains of cemetery dirt_ , she told him once.

"I ended up producing. She ended up alone."

And every time he came home, grinning from ear to ear with the music that was still streaming in his veins, her loneliness, her accusing eyes, tore into him like arrows, and he sagged with the knowledge that he wasn't going to be enough to change how she felt.

"She wanted the house. I wanted the freedom." Lew shook his head. "Sure as fuck got it. Now I drink what I want, snort what I want. Fuck what I want. All I want is her."

~

The problem with the last overdose... The thing was, people usually left him alone, sprawled on his bed or in the bathroom, or on the studio floor. By the time he gasped back to life, shivering and thanking his demon blood, they'd all thought he'd just slept it off. Wasn't so easy with someone near-sober in the room, taking his pulse, swearing he saw Lew die.

Well, Lew _did_ die, he just wasn't going to let that stop him. But the LA stint was over for him. He had to roam further afield, search for a new place, a new life.

He snuck back once, to see the statue. He'd read about it and that gave him a laugh, a short bark into the cloud of cigarette smoke, but he had to see it with his own eyes.

It was pretty satisfying. Yeah, that would be how he would have wanted to be remembered. Nice touch. Someone tied a yellow ribbon around it, too.

And there were flowers, mostly dying or dead, and cards eaten by time and rodents' teeth, splashed with rain and God knew what else; he smelled the familiar stink of booze and urine. People paid their respects. But one card caught his eye.

There were smears of water droplets on it, rain or tears, no way to tell. It was simple, small, square, white, with only a few words in blue ink.

 

_I will always remember you.  
\- Janie._


End file.
